The Crasher Page 30

  “Yes, Johnny,” she said sweetly.

  There was one thing she would be planning a strategy for, strictly for herself. The big night at the library. If Johnny was not willing to take her, she would have to take herself—as surely she was experienced enough to do.

  She had to meet his father sooner than later, and the Literary Lions evening would be the perfect opportunity. She would prove to Johnny there would be no reason for the great Quentin Peet to say “I told you so” about the folly of their relationship.

  Equally important, if by then she still had the jewels in her possession, with no word from Alex, she would put her new plan into action. She would “discover” the jewels as if for the first time, and cry to both Peet senior and junior for help.

  If everything went as well as she hoped, the “Library do” could be the last crash of her life.

  It would certainly be the most important.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  247 WEST 20TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY

  Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda was the name of a new play opening soon in a neighborhood theater on West Twenty-second. Ads for it were everywhere. Pasted on trees, poles, and stuck on graffiti-covered walls, they exclaimed the play was about “the sick insane world of gambling”; but every time Ginny saw the title, she thought the same thing: How perfectly it summed up her relationship with Johnny.

  As she said dolefully to Esme on the phone, “You’re back from your honeymoon. I’m back where I started with Johnny.”

  At least that’s how she felt most days, dwelling with despair (as opposed to regret) on what she thought of as “the wedding weekend,” torturing herself with the knowledge that despite all the warning signals, she’d ended up as just another notch on Johnny’s well-notched belt.

  To begin with, after he’d dropped her back at the loft that Sunday night, it had taken four painfully slow, count-the-minutes days before she’d heard from him again, and when he’d called, every molecule of her had strained to hear a different, intimate note in his voice. Yet he hadn’t sounded different at all.

  Friendly, warm, casual, “Hi, Ginny, when can we get together to go over some things? I’d like to book you for…” Same voice, the same kind of words, “booking” her, as opposed to asking her for a date—or, as she told Esme in her best Tallulah Bankhead voice, “asking for my hand in marriage.”

  She didn’t tell Esme that the first time she saw him after the weekend, miserable wretch that she was, when he’d opened the door (to his office on West Seventy-seventh, not his home upstairs), she’d dived straight into his arms, although they’d scarcely been outstretched. Had there been a fierce new look of love (she told herself she’d have even settled for lust) on his face?

  Frankly, no, although she’d had scant time to do a study. While they were still standing awkwardly together in the doorway, Quentin Peet himself had phoned, announcing he was back in town unexpectedly, and suggesting a quick drink.

  Johnny hadn’t blinked, let alone hesitated or even made much of an apology to her. He’d literally dropped everything, including her, to rush right over to the Century where, as he’d said with a mock bow, “The eagle has landed.”

  Since then, they’d hardly seen each other, although with increasing reluctance, she’d acted as his stand-in at some events, delivering her notes over quick coffees in midtown cafés near his Next! office, because he said he was too busy to do it any other way.

  Was he trying to avoid meeting her anywhere where they could be alone? Was he fighting an ardent love for her, or at the very least, an attraction he feared could grow into something stronger? If so, he appeared to be winning the battle, she thought; and she moped.

  On a brilliant, sunny, bird-singing spring day, he phoned to say he had to go out of town for a few days on a special assignment for the magazine.

  “Nothing to do with the column. Something I’ve been following for the past few weeks, which might turn into the kind of story I’ve been looking for.”

  She wasn’t comforted by the fact he’d taken the trouble to tell her. His voice had lost the laugh. He sounded distant, distracted.

  “Where are you going?”

  “San Juan.”

  San Juan. The name hit her like a shower of ice water. Hadn’t Dolores, the Latina bombshell Quentin Peet had so thoroughly disapproved of, hailed from San Juan? No, no, no, of course not. Dolores was Bolivian.

  “Something I’ve been following for the past few weeks,” he’d said. Or did he mean “someone”? Ginny immediately thought of someone just like Dolores, a voluptuous beauty in an itsy-bitsy bikini, exotic, hot-blooded, hiding her passion beneath a lily-white skin, sheltered on a golden beach by a giant parasol. Or perhaps, now that Johnny professed to hate his ex-wife so much, he was into deeply tanned Latinas?

  San Juan? Bolivia? What difference did it make? Both places were full of scorching women. “I’ll miss you,” he was saying. “Sorry we haven’t seen much of each other. I’ll call as soon as I get back, probably in about a week.”

  How she managed to stop asking, “Can I come with you?” she didn’t know.

  There was a painful pause. She dug her again half-bitten nails into her palm, not yet giving up, praying he might still say, “Oh, what the hell, why don’t you come, too,” but he didn’t.

  She’d hardly put the phone down before she started waiting for his return. She tried to stop thinking the worst—that he might be taking somebody to the golden beaches with him (the somebody he’d once said he was “tied up” with?)… tried to stop thinking of who might be waiting for him down there… tried to stop thinking, period.

  But everywhere she went she was reminded of Johnny. Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda taunted her as she went to get her shoes soled, while in her mailbox came a leaflet announcing Women Acting Up, “A dark comedy soon arriving on West 17th Street, which explores friends and family through bedtime prayers, dark secrets and lies…” She needed every prayer she could get for the dark and dirty secret she was still being forced to live with.

  The day after Johnny’s departure, locking the loft door in the afternoon, shuddering with every move, Ginny took the gems out of the toilet to give them a shower. None seemed any the worse for their watery incarceration. On hitting the light, they emitted the same spectacular flashes of fire in her pathetic little bathroom as they had at 834 Fifth. When she returned them to their hiding place, her hands were shaking so much, she had to go out to the nearest bar and drink a brandy and soda.

  Slumped in a corner of the bar, she reflected that all of February, March, and half of April had gone by since she’d first discovered the jewels. She started to count. Seventy-four days! She could hardly believe she’d managed to live through one day, let alone seventy-four, but then so much had happened in her life, so much—meaning Johnny-had happened.

  “You need cheering up,” Esme insisted. On returning home from the bar, with Johnny only gone for twenty-four hours, Ginny had called her best friend to admit she’d fallen into a deep, dark depression.

  Esme had an antidote. “A wonderful new flea market I’ve just heard about, loaded with incredible fabric bargains.”

  Ginny had to laugh. “Es, you certainly know the right buttons to push.”

  Esme picked Ginny up early the next morning, hoping to have breakfast or at least coffee at the loft before they set out. Not for the first time Ginny had forgotten to restock her kitchen, so instead on the way across town they stopped off at a café not too far from Gosman’s old factory.

  Over cappuccino, with all the poise of an experienced married woman, Esme asked, “D’you think you and Johnny have any kind of a future?”

  Ginny sighed. Esme could always be relied upon to aim straight for the solar plexus, no matter how much one tried to deflect her. Except when it came to Ted, with whom, perhaps from some innate sense of insecurity, Esme usually took a circuitous route.

  “A future? Sure,” Ginny lied. “If I want one.” She tossed her head optimistically. “I just have to be
come as indispensable to Johnny as I once was to Everard Gosman—in a totally different way, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Esme, pouting, showing she didn’t believe a word of it. “If he’ll let you.” Ginny couldn’t remember Esme ever irritating her more.

  “He’ll let me, you’ll see.”

  “Well, you should always have some food in the house, Ginny. You know the old saying… the way to a man’s heart is through—”

  “Esme, shut up!” They glowered at each other and hardly spoke until, after being at the flea market for about thirty minutes, Ginny stumbled across a stunning find, a wide brocade border, heavily embroidered with fat gold bumblebees and laurel leaves, tacked onto the skirt of a decrepit, badly sagging sofa.

  “Just look at this, Es.” In her enthusiasm, she forgot how maddening Esme had been. “I must have it.”

  “That! Surely you’re not that hard up. It will cost a fortune to repair and who knows where it’s been.”

  “Not the sofa, dopey. The skirt, the border. Look at that embroidery, that work. It’s special. How much?” Ginny asked a shriveled little woman who appeared to be the owner.

  “Hundred and fifty.”

  “No way!” screeched Esme. They started to walk away.

  “Okay, okay. What’s your offer, miss?”

  Ginny bent down to examine the gold stitching more closely. It really was amazing. She lifted up the skirt. Good. It would be a cinch to remove. She had to have it. She would get it cleaned, then use it to border a magnificent velvet cloak, the Napoleonic kind, in which to sweep up—and down—a staircase, the kind in which to make a grand entrance.

  She knew just where to get a bolt of exactly the right color velvet, burnished copper chestnut, against which the fat gold bees would glisten even in the dark.

  “Well, missr

  “I only want the border.”

  “Well, then, but that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it, then. That’s what makes it different…”

  “You can say that again.” Ginny blinked hard, startled by sudden tears as she thought of Alex. Whenever she used that expression with him, he would smile his wonderful sardonic smile and repeat whatever he’d just said. “Fifty dollars…” she offered.

  “Oh, don’t waste my time, miss.”

  It started to rain. “Oh, do come on, Ginny,” Esme moaned.

  “Sixty.”

  Esme saw a passing taxi. “Taxi!” she cried. It sped by, but the sofa owner saw she was about to lose her customer.

  “Seventy-five. That’s final.” She put a dirty hand out

  Ginny hadn’t planned to spend anything like seventy-five dollars in the flea market, but she knew nothing like this border would come her way again. “Okay, if I can take it now.” Much to Esme’s disapproval Ginny paid by check and, with the help of the woman’s sharp knife, stripped the border carefully away.

  When she got back to the loft, Johnny had called. “It’s rainy and gray and as hot and humid as hell here. Where are you, Ginny Walker, Inc. Get back to your drawing board at once.”

  He didn’t leave a number, and to take her mind off his absence Ginny went out to the wholesaler to buy the velvet. She started work on the cloak as soon as she returned.

  As usual, she’d acted on impulse, and okay, so now she had to admit it: She was making the cloak for the Literary Lions dinner only two weeks away. Once she’d spotted the imperial bees, she’d immediately thought of making a cloak, the kind of protective armor she would need to bolster her courage on the night of the Lions.

  Designing a cloak, rather than a dress, to wear to such an important event was peculiar, she knew that; putting the horse before the cart, but that was the kind of designer she was. She got carried away when a piece of fabric “said something,” and generally it lived up to her expectations.

  She held the velvet against her skin, in love with its deep rich color. She had an idea. The copper chestnut would enhance the color of a dress she already owned. Not just any dress. The only one endowed with ecstatically happy memories, her “blushing” bridesmaid’s dress.

  Excited, she took the dress out of the art deco wardrobe and carried it with the velvet to the window. She was right. It enriched and showed off the blush dramatically. She would have to change the dress’s shape—drastically—it was far too jeune fille. She already knew what she had to do, but she would work on the cloak first.

  Preparing the paper pattern, she thought about Esme’s tactless question and her reaction to it. If Johnny wasn’t “tied up” with anyone, and despite her insecurity, she couldn’t really believe after their weekend together he was, there was nothing to stand in the way of a future together.

  Except his father.

  She daydreamed, staring into space. She would set out to prove to the formidable Quentin Peet what a thoughtful, caring, home-loving, nurturing, undemanding, thrifty daughter-in-law she could be. Or, if he was looking for something else, what a money-producing, street-savvy, articulate, dazzling hostess; in other words, the perfect woman for Johnny.

  In any case she had to meet the great man in order to ask for his help with the jewels. Her mind was made up about that. She’d set a deadline as far as Alex was concerned and nothing was going to lessen her determination.

  Despite the fact Poppy still referred to it as a “do,” Ginny knew from Lee that there was a grandeur, a special sense of importance about the Literary Lions dinner, presided over by Mrs. Vincent Astor, the Chairman Emeritus of the New York Public Library, and the city’s most revered citizen.

  Perhaps this was one time when arriving early could be to her advantage. On the other hand, crashing early was always a more difficult proposition.

  It depended on the weather. Rain would be helpful, with a lot going on in the cloakroom area. On the other hand, she didn’t want her wonderful cloak to get wet.

  What was the best time to arrive? It was an impossible question to answer. There was no “best time” for crashers in a city like New York, where unpunctuality was the rule rather than the exception, and “fashionably late” could mean anything from fifteen to sixty or more minutes later than the stated time.

  Other people’s lateness had helped her crash in the past, when she’d attached herself to the tail end of a late crowd, rolling in with them like an unexpected giant wave, engulfing any checkers left at the point of entry. Should she try the same approach for the Lions dinner?

  She was too tired to think about it anymore; too tired to go on working. She packed up the velvet and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. She took a sleeping pill and dreamed she was surfing with Alex through the mighty halls of the library. As the waves grew bigger, Alex effortlessly sailed across them, leaving her farther and farther behind. She couldn’t stay up much longer, but Alex obviously didn’t care. “Alex! Help! Alex!” She woke up screaming, on the floor.

  No wonder she’d dreamed Alex didn’t care. She hadn’t heard one word from her thieving cousin, while night and day the gems glittered like evil reptiles in her toilet tank.

  As she lay tossing and turning, she remembered the decision she’d come to in Johnny’s apartment: She would give Alex one more month to redeem himself and rescue her, and not a second more.

  She got up, agitated, and went into the kitchen where the 1995 fashion calendar Lee had sent over in March was hanging beside the stove. Ringed in red was the April “wedding weekend.” By the time the Literary Lions dinner arrived, the month would just about be up.

  Ginny started pacing around the loft. If she hadn’t heard from Alex by then, whether she succeeded in crashing and meeting the mighty Peet or not, she would go ahead with her plan and put on the greatest act of her life: She would pretend to Johnny that she had discovered the jewels for the first time.

  Having made this decision, she again felt a sense of enormous relief, just as she had in Johnny’s apartment, and slept like a baby until almost eight o’clock.

  She was at the sewing machine, finishing Poppy’s georgette
dress so that she could give her full attention to the cloak, when the doorbell rang.

  “Yes?”

  “Delivery.”

  Her heart thumped in her chest. From Angus? From Alex? Oh, please God let it be a word, any word from Alex about collecting, not delivering.

  “Who is it?”

  There was a long agonizing pause, then an irritated voice said, “Grace’s Marketplace. Is this, eh, Ginny Walker?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t ordered anything.”

  “Well, somebody has. It’s paid for. D’you want me to leave it or not?”

  “Wait there.” She was sure it was a trick or maybe a message from Alex buried in a basket of fruit. Half praying, half dreading what she’d find, Ginny rushed downstairs to discover Esme had sent her a food parcel with crackers, cheeses, herbal tea, and three different kinds of coffee “for when Johnny comes home.” Darling Esme.

  There had always been people in his life who said he aped his father. Even his mother had accused him of it at some time or another, and Dolores had never stopped.

  Johnny thought of both women now as he cut his chin with the straight-edged George Trumper razor he’d bought years ago in London. The kind his father always used, although Johnny had never seen so much as a scratch on the old man’s face.

  He scowled at the blood as it spurted into the basin. Actually, he rarely cut himself. He couldn’t blame his father; he could probably blame Ginny Walker. In fact, he did blame Ginny Walker.

  Whoever wrote “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” sure knew what he was writing about. He’d got Ms. Walker under his skin all right, and he didn’t like it one little bit. He didn’t want to fall in love again; therefore he wasn’t in love—certainly not with a giraffe-legged, kooky, crazy girl with such a major personality flaw that she spent half her time going where she wasn’t wanted. He corrected himself: where she wasn’t expected.